The Community Learning Partnership Story
There is broad recognition among people who work on issues of poverty, race and community-building that we face a massive talent shortage. Our communities have great difficulty finding staff and leaders with the full range of knowledge, skills and experience which are needed to tackle the immense challenges facing low-income neighborhoods. The shortage of grassroots organizers and executive directors is particularly crippling for community groups. It also constitutes a barrier for public and private agencies which have learned from experience that they cannot successfully address the most serious issues our cities and rural communities face without widespread community involvement and strong local leaders and organizations.
The Community Learning Partnership was created in 2002 to focus solely on this crisis. Its staff and Steering Committee are composed of people with great experience in community organizing and development, higher education and training, including representatives of the primary sites where CLP is working. The Partnership operates as a special project of Community Catalyst, a national nonprofit headquartered in Boston and dedicated to helping people bring about policy changes through research, organizing, and advocacy.
The Community Learning Partnership concentrates most heavily on creating new educational pathways into youth and community organizing. These pathways are designed specifically for people of color who have directly experienced poverty and lack of opportunity, and who collectively represent a largely untapped pool of talent. As we develop training and educational programs for new organizers, we are also addressing the needs which current staff organizers and executive directors have for continuing learning and skill development.
Our goal is to create the broad, intensive educational programs which only institutions of higher education can provide, deeply involving practitioners with academics in ensuring the programs graduate people with the skills as well as knowledge they need to prepare of the particular challenges of organizing and revitalizing low-income communities, enlisting youth and community leaders fully in that effort.